Simple HDRI lighting tute

[Ian.H]

Hi all,

Many of my renders use alternative lighting methods to the "standard" white reflection plane.. so.. I've decided to make this thread here on how I do it

- Download HDRShop (includes 1 HDRI probe)
- Unpack and run HDRI.exe (no installation required)

- Load 'probes/rnl_probe.hdr'



- Select Image->Panorama->Panoramic Transformations



- Apply the following changes



- Save converted image



- In 3DS, hit 8 to bring up the Environment settings and load the newly saved panoramic HDRI probe as the background image



- Hit M to bring up the Material Editor and drag the map from the background image into an empty material slot.

- Make the following change to the map



- Scroll down and expand the 'Output' section and make the following change



- Drag the material from the Material Editor back to the background of the Environment settings (choose 'yes' when asked to overwrite map with same name)

- Make sure you've removed / hidden any reflection planes you've used previously

- Hit render and wait a bit...



Hope this is useful to some



Regards,

Ian

[Kryten]

Nice, I'm gonna try and get back into 3DS a bit more and this will come in very useful.

[L(Oo)ney]

Nice!

[Ian.H]

woot! sweet Looney

The panoramic part was something I read in a tute myself.. but I'd tried it few times without and it looks kinda pants as it's too "sharp" rather than "wrapped".

Your UFR looks the nuts



Regards,

Ian

[collinss]

Nice tute, but i cant seem to get it to work, what do i do with the normal skin on the car, what i do is import the car, and just leave it, dont put any plane or skin or anything on the car, and go straight to environment and import the HDR scene by going to BITMAP and finding it etc. then i push M and drag it across to a material and make the changes and it goes all white, then i drag it back and it says put it as INSTANCE or COPY so i choose instance( i have tried copy aswell, no difference) and then click render and nothing happens, just a white background with a totally standard normal car sitting there like they are when they are imported with no reflection or anything on it what am i doing wrong?

[Ian.H]

Hi collinss..

Firstly, is this from a scene you've downloaded from here? or one you've created from scratch by importing thr .cmx file and sorting the materials out yourself?

You say "make changes and it goes all white" regarding the material.. are you 100% sure you made the texture->environment [spherical wrapping] change (image 6 above)? I've had some strange effects if I forget that stage (just trying to make sure and guessing at why it might be).

If it's not one of my scenes you downloaded, what are your GI multiplier settings? Are you using the RNL probe from within the download in the first post? or another one you've downloaded off the net? Some produce more reflections than others, with some almost producing "nothing" at all.

Have you got 'LightTracer' enabled in the 'Advanced' tab of the rendering (F10) window selected? This'll help, don't know if it'll make the ulktimate difference of not though.. I enable this all the time by default (if a scene downloaded from here, all these wil be set correctly anyway unless changed).

If none of this is close to getting things sorted, can you post some screenshots dood?

Your Brazil luma server settings (F10 window), your environment (8 window) settings and your material editor with the HDRI material expanded and an example of a render?

Without seeing you hit the keys / buttons or mer going through it literally step by step.. I'm just guessing here atm.. but the tute was written in 10 mins and I know doesn't cover everything.. I might fill in some blanks sometime too

If ya can post some screens / pass on more info regarding the above.. I'll try n help further



Regards,

Ian

[collinss]

Yeah, I am just starting from scratch, open up 3ds max 6.....import one of the cars, then i dont do anything and go straight to environment and apply the map ( after i have adjusted it in HDRShop ) then open up the material editor while the environment window is still up and drag it across as an "instance" then change both the spherical thing and the RGB Value, i read a different tute and it said to change the RGB Value to whatever the number was in HDRshop to get rid of all the magenta colour, I seemed to have been able to get the reflection on the car, but the background is a huge blurred version of the HDR image it seems, so I have to make sure the camera is facing downwards so the background isnt showing, which is kind of dumn ...I am using the rnl probe, I downloaded some other hdri images and used them, but doesnt seem to have the amount of reflection on any of them that yours does.

And how do I make is so everything around the car is white, BUT with the reflections still on it and with shadows, because atm I can only make a omni light with shadows and the lights fades out to dark around the car :S

[Ian.H]

Ahh yup, the tute on splutterfish.com suggests 256 (or to match the probe's white clamp value). I lowered the value to 64 for mine recently as this gave a more subtle effect but I also have my skylight multiplier at 1.3 rather than 1.0 by default.

Yup.. you're loading the HDRI probe as a background image.. you can load any image into the background envmap slot and you'll get some reflections.. but the HDRI privdes better lighting effects. To get around seeing it as a background image if you want to move camera positions, is you'll need to add a box or plane or....... behind the model to create a new background that wont have the HDRI image plastered across it.. this was a quick 5 min jobby.. but the idea:



This uses a plane infront of the car to use as a plain background but also uses a subtle HDRI probe for the lighting

If using Brazil.. enable the ground plane and make it white in the CSG server.. if not, you'll need to create a plane under the car as a floor and make a white material for it.. but a lot of the problem also sounds like it could be coming from the omni light.. these can easily whitewash. You'll need to enable a skylight too to get the nice, softer shadows. Don't know if this link is any use to you as a base reference? <http://www.mrussoart.hpg.ig.com.br/m...av/introav.htm>



Regards,

Ian

[collinss]

I cant seem to get it to work, so you mean place a box or plane on the side where the background is? and I cant get my lights figured out, what lighting have you used for that scene? a skylight or omni? because if i try to use a skylight it takes about 100 years to render and is all grainy :S

[Ian.H]

Yup.. I've attached a screenshot of the 3DS view of the above UFR scene to hopefully outline it a little easier

The background plane you create "behind the car".. but in relation to your view, not necessarily literally behind the car

I haven't added any lights for the scene.. it uses the default brazil luma server skylight setting.. but if using an IE5 Sky normal lighting object, I think you'll need to also look at things like the 'sampling' values in the render options as this'll help eliminate some of the speckles / grainy effect.. but yeah, normal skylights take ages to render.. some of my first few took ~18 hours to render a 1280x1024 size image on an AMD3000+ with 1Gb RAM Brazil seems to render much much faster and I can do a 1280x1024 in about 30-45 mins depending on the scene.

Are you using brazil collinss? If so, there's no immediate need to add extra light objects as the skylight can be controlled fm the render tab in the render window under the 'Brazil Luma Server' settings

Another link that might be of use... <http://www.3dlinks.com/oldsite/tutorials_max.cfm> If you scroll down nearer the bottom, you'll see a shitload of tutes.. some covering lighting techniques.

Hope this helps?



Regards,

Ian